MAMEWorld Forums - MAME Artwork: Official

> Thank you Cuavas!! I can already envision how this is going to be more flexible in
> the long term... well worth the wait. And for simple artwork files, this actually
> makes things a bit easier.

Yeah, the goal is more flexibility in the long run. For some examples that are already taking advantage of it with internal artwork, check out some of the following:

irrmaze (irrmaze.lay) - pretty basic case of allowing some elements to be hidden while others are always displayed
matahari (by17_matahari.lay) - fairly simple example besides the length, allows the user to hide everything if they really want to
sss/shienryu (segabill.lay/segabillv.lay) - nesting, so hiding parent collection hides children and disables their toggle controls, and hiding a collection by default
jockeyc (jockeyc.lay) - nothing more advanced than the other ones listed, but it's another example
sentx6p (sentx6p.lay) - this one uses collections in conjunction with parameterised groups to greatly reduce the amount of XML required to show all the controller displays and allow them to be shown/hidden individually
spdheat (spdheat.lay) - basic nesting again

> Assuming it's going to take me until "at least" the end of the month to update all
> current files if I start today... is the new layout system in an almost final state?
> Or are there still other features to take care of coming soon that I should wait for?

It's nowhere near that urgent - only internal artwork needs to be updated by the end of the month. I'm not going to remove support for these deprecated elements in external artwork for at least a year. I wouldn't rush to start updating the external artwork if I were you.

The new features from this cycle can be considered stable now, so you can start using them in external artwork. There are a couple of other layout system changes that I'd like to get done soon (hopefully for this cycle or the next one), but they won't require changes to existing layouts, just fix some issues and add some flexibility.

I'll make a Python script that can migrate simple cases and flag issues. It's going to be closer to the release or maybe even after the release. As I said, it's not urgent to update all the external artwork.